Dev Patel and Ben Stiller to Star in the Grisly, Blood-Soaked True Story of the Chippendales

They're close to a go on a project that's been bouncing around Hollywood for 20 years.

In light of the wild commercial success of Magic Mike (and, to a lesser extent, its sequel), it’s frankly a little surprising we haven’t been deluged with male stripper movies. But one is apparently on the way now, and it looks like a doozy: Chippendales, the true origin story of the male stripping empire, whose greased-up, G-string-clad dancers were inescapable at ‘80s bachelorette parties.

Deadline reports Dev Patel is in talks to play Steve Banerjee, the savvy entrepreneur behind the bump-n-grind sensation, with Ben Stiller already attached to play his choreographer, manager, and general right-hand man Nick DeNoia. Stiller’s been attached for a while, both as a co-star and producer (via his Red Hour shingle); the film itself has been knocking around for 20 years, with a revolving door of directors that includes Barry Sonnenfeld, Tony Scott, Oliver Stone, and David Michod. Talent of that caliber isn’t just attracted to a giggly striper movie; it’s a grisly and bloody tale of excess and greed, complete with murders, hit men, arson, racketeering, and suicide. In other words, Magic Mike meets Boogie Nights.

As you can imagine, considering the variety of styles, the script has gone through a fair number of permutations along the way; the current iteration is credited to one Isaac Adamson, who also penned the forthcoming Bubbles, a stop-motion animated movie about Michael Jackson’s chimp, co-directed by Taika Waititi and Fantastic Mr. Fox’s Mark Gustafson. So now we wanna see that too.